


bronze and gold

by cloverdale



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Angst, One Shot, shiro and matt reunion!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 22:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloverdale/pseuds/cloverdale
Summary: i see you when i close my eyes. i see you in my dreams. but you’re gone. i sent you away. i sent you away to save you. i wish i hadn’t.[lowercase intentional]





	bronze and gold

your eyes were the color bronze and gold. that color is imprinted on my soul.

your eyes are beautiful. your mother’s eyes. your sister’s eyes.

i see you in her eyes, in the way she smiles, in her fight, in the little picture she always carries.

she’s so much like you. she’s come so far. you’d be proud, but you wouldn’t want this life for her. she’s too young for this. too young for this, just like she was too young for kerberos. that was the first time i saw her, on launch day. she said she’d wanted to come, and you’d said that someday, she’d see the stars, and her eyes shone. you’d hugged her, and you’d met my eye, and we’d smiled.

we both loved you so much. so much that she turns her back on the window as the stars pass, the blackness of space we’d all loved, and scrap what little she can about your location that she can find from records of crashes and second-long clips of you in the darkness.

i can’t look her in the eyes anymore. she looks too much like you, acts too much like you, thinks too much like you. but she’s not you.

she’s smarter than you, but you smiled more. she’s younger than you, but you had more life. she hunts for you, and i see your determination in her eyes. she laughs with the weight on the universe on her chest, a burden far beyond her years. i wish i could carry it all for her. you laughed like a child, all the time, without a care in the world.

she’s here with me, and she’ll find you. she’ll never stop until she does.

it’s my fault.

i sent you away.

you’re gone.

it was the only way. you’re no soldier. that wasn’t your type of fight. you never would have survived the arena.

i miss you.

god, i miss you.

i miss your laugh. your jokes. your horrible, horrible puns. the way you curled up in my arms, your hair tickling my chin. you liked to twirl the long part of my around your finger and tug on it when i got lost in my thoughts. the bad ones. you always knew when they were the bad ones.

now, they’re almost all bad ones. i watch people die. i watch worlds fall. i watch as war breaks out across the known universe. i watch it, untouchable, from inside a invulnerable alien warship.

but i watch them build. i watch as people walk free after thousands of years of oppression. i travel the universe, with thousands of strange worlds, each with their own constellations.

you loved the constellations. we both did. we knew them all. you used to trace them on my back, while i ate or flew or worked, and i’d guess what it was. i got a kiss if i was right. on my back, on my lips, on the top of my spine. you tickled me if i got it wrong. you thought it was hilarious that i was ticklish. sometimes, i pretended to get it wrong because you smiled the brightest when my shell cracked. when i was more than the finest pilot the garrison had ever produced.

it was my dream, to fly. but now, i dream only of finding you. i dream of the arena. of the beings i’ve killed, of others who died. of the day i became the champion. of that very first day, when i sent you away.

you screamed, and it was the sound of steel crashing and harpies shrieking. my world burned as you fell.

i never want to hear you like that again.

sometimes, i feel your touch on skin that’s not longer there. i feel your fingers in hair that’s turned white from the weight of surviving. you trace constellations on skin now marred with scars of battle. those are the best dreams, on good nights.

war. this is war. i never signed up for this, but i have to. this is the right thing for me. there are no wars on earth anymore, but when there were, people said you could either fight for what you believe in or do nothing. you know that’s never been me.

but they shouldn’t have to. katie, who just wants to find you, hunk, who never signed up for this, allura, who woke up to find her civilization gone, and coran, who had to watch it fall.

keith’s here too. he’s fallen in love. i could see it in his eyes. i know that look. i remember what it feels like, too. the first moments, when you first realize you’re falling in love. i remember the look in keith’s eyes, the way he cradled lance in his arms.

you’d like lance. he loves to joke, and he’s never missed a shot. 

there’s more to him. he doesn’t thing he belong with us. he doesn’t think he’s worthy. he is.

but he shouldn’t be here. he should be with his family. they should all be a home, worrying about whether the boy in math class likes them. (i was lucky enough that he did.)

keith should have a family. i tried, but the universe has thrown everything it has against us.

i was blessed with a family, and you were too. i wanted you to be a part of my family. i wanted you and i to have a family. what would making you a part of my family even mean, when you were already the center of my universe?

you’ve always been the center of my universe, since the day i met you. you pulled me in, like a moon to its planet, like a planet to its star, like a star to the center of its galaxy. you laughed at my jokes. you got my outdated references. you understood me. you saw me.

would you recognize me now, with a hand of fire and scars on my skin? would you still see me, the way you did all those years ago? would you still love me, the weight of a thousand wars on my shoulders?

you do.

i see it in your eyes.

you’ve always seen me.

your hands shake, clutched around a staff. my hands shake, one glowing with purple fire.

a scar runs down your cheek. you have seen battle. you shouldn’t have. this isn’t your type of fight.

you are every bit as beautiful and radiant and magnetic as the day i met you. 

your staff falls to the ground. the purple fire flickers out.

“takashi?” you whisper.

and you ran and i ran and you hugged me with muscles that weren’t there before and without glasses digging into my chest and your hair tickles my chin, like it always did.

you’re here.

god, i’ve missed you.

“matt,” i whisper.

you smiled and looked up at me with tears in your eyes.

eyes the color of bronze and gold.


End file.
